


Good Omens, GoodFellas

by anactoriatalksback



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Misuse of Brokeback Mountain, Misuse of Casablanca, Misuse of mafia movies, My apologies to PG Wodehouse, No books were sold in the making of this fic, No powers are used, Or rather one (1) hijink and 1.5 shenanigans, Scheming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21903847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: A smarmy developer wants to buy The Bookshop, and neither Crowley nor Aziraphale can miracle their way out of this mess. Luckily, Crowley - armed with Golden Girls-themed cocktails and a handful of mafia movies - is on the case...
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 72
Kudos: 201
Collections: South Downs Holiday-ish Exchange





	Good Omens, GoodFellas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thehoyden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehoyden/gifts).



> The lovely and talented thehoyden asked for:
> 
> "Based on that tumblr post with the James Bond-style movie poster—so maybe something like: for Reasons, performing miracles is a bad idea at the moment, so Crowley gets Aziraphale out of a tight spot by cinematic knowledge, his own observation of humans, and sheer dumb luck. He saves the day (and his angel), and it’s basically the best time he’s had in recent memory."
> 
> Unfortunately, the actual movie-wizardry in this fic is ... relegated to quotations, so I can only apologise. But nevertheless.
> 
> I hope you have a fabulous festive season, my dear!

‘They want to _buy_ the bookshop?’

‘They _want_ to buy the land,’ says Aziraphale, taking an agitated bite of his _croqueta_. ‘They’ll _tolerate_ the acquisition of the bookshop.’

‘Ah,’ says Crowley. ‘That does make more sense.’

Aziraphale sniffs.

In Crowley’s defence, Aziraphale has not expended a great deal of effort into putting the ‘shop’ in ‘bookshop’. Has, in fact, taken some pains to the contrary. Opening hours that can best be described as ‘stochastic’. A rich, moist fug that promises a wealth of untreatable skin conditions if you let your hand linger on any surface for more than a nanosecond. Beatific but still palpably homicidal rage at the meekest suggestion that a book might leave its hallowed Frith Street sepulchre, even sweetened by quite-possibly-criminal sums of money.

It has been, to Crowley’s surprise, a not-unviable business model[1]. In the vein of The Rudest Chinese Restaurant in London, a steady stream of visitors makes its pilgrimage every year to be thwarted, rebuffed and scorned[2].

The problem is repeat business. Once you’ve met with Aziraphale’s particular brand of retail _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ , you’ve sort of seen it all. Why come back again and again for the same flavour of punishment[3]? London is profuse with exciting, varied and reliable delivery mechanisms of humiliation and infinitely-deferred gratification[4].

So Crowley doesn’t precisely blame Baxter’s, that most plummy of property developers, for thinking of Fell’s as less of a going concern and more of – well, a concern that should be gone.

‘Can’t you just…’ he waves his fingers, ‘nudge them away?’

Aziraphale sighs. ‘They’re cracking down,’ he says, ‘Upstairs.’

‘We’re auditing ourselves too,’ says Crowley gloomily, ‘Downstairs[5].’

‘So…’ says Aziraphale.

‘No…’ Crowley snaps his fingers. Aziraphale shakes his head, staring mournfully at him over the rim of his glass[6].

‘Well, then,’ says Crowley, ‘looks like it’s time to go to the mattresses.’

Aziraphale’s eyes widen. ‘I don’t have any - ’

‘It doesn’t – don’t worry about it.’

* * *

The first thing, Crowley decides, is to remind the community of the bookshop.

It’s not going to be easy to convert Fell’s into a Beloved Soho Institution overnight, but they’ve got a few things going for them:

  1. Aziraphale’s unquestionable, essential and ineffable gayness;
  2. The reams of Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Woolf and Isherwood that Aziraphale will chunter on about at tremendous length and Ancient Mariner intensity;
  3. Even the lingering … bouquet … of the shop, which with a bit of luck and a tailwind can be massaged into a swashbucklingly seedy authenticity.



Crowley holds readings and slam nights and, on one memorable occasion, scenes from a queer ballet rendition of _A Clockwork Orange_. He watches _You’ve Got Mail_ and purchases – with actual money – a clanking, spitting coffee-grinder.

‘My dear,’ says Aziraphale, ‘you must not think me ungrateful, but – are you quite sure that device makes remotely drinkable coffee?’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t,’ says Crowley, ‘but I don’t want to scare off your existing market.’

‘The point is, angel,’ he continues, stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, ‘to encourage repeat custom without making it look like you actually _want_ it.’

‘I _don’t_ want it,’ says Aziraphale. He’s looking rather intently at Crowley’s bared forearm.

‘Exactly!’ says Crowley. ‘Leave it to me, angel.’

Crowley’s wearing a white jacket and holding a shaker. He’s wheeled out a rather nice Burr drinks cabinet, given it a bit of a buff (not too much, though), and is mixing Kentucky bourbon, honey, lemon syrup and Angostura bitters.

‘There’s a Blanche for you,’ he says to the young lady waiting with a napkin. ‘Have you put down the name yet?’

She nods. ‘ _Challenge_ by Vita Sackille-West,’ she says. ‘I’ve tried before, but I only got a nine out of ten.’

Crowley nods sympathetically. ‘Better luck this time, eh?’

The cocktail and quiz nights aren’t doing too shabbily either. The punters buy a drink, write down the name of the book they want to buy, and if they answer Aziraphale’s questions correctly – all of them – they even get to leave with it.

It hasn’t happened yet. Crowley’s _Golden Girls_ -themed cocktails are very strong, and Aziraphale is very clever and very committed.

But hope tends to triumph over experience, and every time they’ve done it there’s been at least one swot who’s managed to get juuuuust close enough to whet the others’ appetites.

And once it happens – well, _if_ it happens, there’s a buttered champagne cocktail with the jammy sod’s name on it.

Aziraphale’s looking at the list of names with a little wrinkle between his brows. He says the popular ones are tricky, and getting trickier every time, because he can’t repeat questions. One must give the poor dears a sporting chance, he says. His nowhere-near-as-discreetly-expressed-as-he-thinks pride in his labyrinthine memory of arcana is, of course, neither here nor there. Crowley does not find the extra flourish he gives his bowtie at his moment of triumph remotely appealing, nor the way the corners of his lips turn up when he has bested a Fellow of All Souls with a Mensa membership, a Mastermind trophy (specialist subject: the poems of Edmund Spenser), and black-rimmed glasses they don’t even need.

Tonight, he has encountered a languishing young thing sighing over a gilt-edged edition of the _Mathnawi_ of Rumi, and appears to be taking her pretensions rather … personally.

‘Don’t frighten her,’ murmurs Crowley. ‘She’ll switch to tea, and I want her nice and sauced for the quiz.’

Aziraphale mutters something unintelligible but almost certainly uncomplimentary about Coleman Barks.

‘Save the smack-talking for the quiz,’ Crowley tells him.

‘Smack - ? Oh. You mean sledging.’

‘Not even cricket fans use that term anymore, angel[7].’

‘I am given to understand,’ says Aziraphale, pink rising in his cheeks, ‘that a little ‘trash talk’ is – ah – _de rigueur_ for – ah – mimic tourneys. I have been watching videos on the Tube.’

‘You don’t take the Tube[8].’

‘Not anymore,’ says Aziraphale, and a shadow passes over his face. ‘But I meant the other Tube. With the videos.’

‘With the – Aziraphale,’ says Crowley, with foreboding, ‘what have you been watching on YouTube?’

‘Well,’ says Aziraphale, bobbing up and down on his toes, ‘are you familiar with rap?’

‘Oh no.’

‘It’s most inspiriting,’ says Aziraphale. ‘There’s a delightful _bildungsroman_ about a young man in Michigan – it’s positively Dickensian, my dear – and there’s a particularly _vigorous_ – er – exhortation to lose oneself in the moment, which - ’

‘Angel,’ says Crowley, very carefully, ‘are you telling me you’ve been listening to _Lose Yourself_?’

‘You know the song!’ Aziraphale clasps his hands. ‘I was reciting the lyrics to myself in the mirror this evening.’ He nods at Crowley. ‘To ‘pump myself up’. As it were.’

‘And,’ says Crowley, a little dazed, ‘did it work?’

‘Do you know,’ says Aziraphale, leaning forward confidentially, ‘I rather think it did.’

‘Yes,’ says Crowley, taking in the rose of Aziraphale’s cheeks and the way the tip of his nose wiggles, ‘yes, I rather think it did too.’

The two of them contemplate each other for – well, Crowley’s not entirely sure for how long. He’s brought out of it by a voice at his elbow hissing an urgent ‘Mr. Crowley.’

Crowley spins on his heel. ‘What?’ he says. ‘I haven’t got all day, you know.’

The young man at his elbow blinks. ‘I – Mr. Crowley, the elderflower - ’

‘The elderflower that’s supposed to have arrived already?’ says Crowley, narrowing his eyes. ‘The elderflower base for my Rose Nylund? The Rose Nylund that was going to be awarded to my angel when he won an epic contest of wills with some wet-behind-the-ears Oxbridge upssssstart?’

The young man considers. ‘The elderflower,’ he says carefully, in the tone of a man clinging to a vanishing certainty, ‘the elderflower that was going to be delivered?’

‘What about it?’

‘It wasn’t,’ says the young man.

‘I gathered that,’ says Crowley, with what he thinks is rather commendable patience. ‘What did they say at the shop?’

‘They say they sent it,’ says the young man.

‘It’s in Covent Garden,’ points out Crowley. ‘Not Hounslow Heath in the seventeen hundreds. Not a lot of elderflower brigands in the twenty-first century.’

The young man looks interested. ‘Did there use to be - ’

‘What? No. Shut up. Focus,’ says Crowley. ‘What happened to the elderflower?’

‘Because if they were like tulips, then I could imagine - ’

‘What,’ says Crowley, ‘happened. To. The. Elderflower?’

‘Well,’ says the young man, ‘it’s funny you should mention elderflower brigands - ’

‘ – Will you _stop_ about the elderflower brigands - ’

‘ – _Because_ ,’ says the young man, ‘the delivery was intercepted.’

‘Intercepted,’ says Crowley.

The young man nods. ‘The crate in which the elderflower was to arrive? Well, they sent the crate. It’s just – empty.’

‘They emptied the crate,’ says Crowley.

‘Well, almost,’ says the young man. ‘They left a note.’

Crowley’s head snaps up. ‘Give it to me.’

‘I was going to,’ says the young man. ‘Right after I told you.’

‘Why didn’t you just give me the ssodding note?’

The young man looks wounded. ‘Context matters, Mr. Crowley.’

‘…Just … give me the bloody thing.’

The young man produces the note with a (somewhat reproachful) flourish. Crowley snatches it from him with an elaborately insincere ‘ _Thank_ you’[9] and hunches over it.

‘IT’LL TAKE MORE THAN ELDERFLOWER,’ says the note.

It’s short. Gnomic. Possibly even menacing. Whoever presented it took considerable pains to cut out and paste individual letters from magazines to form the message, like a kidnapper with a strong sense of tradition.

Shame about the ‘BAXTER DEVELOPERS’ letterhead, though.

‘It’s a pity, really,’ says Crowley later, showing Aziraphale the note, ‘I was rather looking forward to saying ‘Round up the usual suspects’.’

Aziraphale is staring at the message. ‘Crowley, this is – this is sabotage.’

‘Can’t stand it, I know you planned it,’ Crowley murmurs.

‘We _do_ know they planned it,’ says Aziraphale, frowning. ‘It says so right -’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Crowley, with a wave of the hand. ‘Of course you realise this means war.’

Aziraphale’s eyes widen. ‘War?’

‘Yes,’ says Crowley. ‘He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.’

‘I see,’ says Aziraphale, following keenly. ‘And we’re doing this the … Chicago way, then?’

Crowley grins and puts on his sunglasses. ‘Leave it to me, angel.’

* * *

Baxter’s premises in Canary Wharf are sleek and gleaming, a serene chrome-and-glass temple with a wonderful view of Gherkins and Shards and other twinkling and thrusting children of Norman Foster Wallace’s imagination. The reception is airy and light, ceilings twenty feet high. The receptionists themselves are leggy and demure, their charcoal-grey jackets and skirts hanging just so. High heels clack on the ground floor and sink into deep pile eggshell carpets on the higher floors. Three-dimensional models abound of office complexes in moribund Hoxton button factories and mansion flats carved out of old Victorian schoolhouses in Chelsea. Even the lifts betray no sign of movement or the burdens they carry, save for the slightest, most unobtrusive sigh as they let you on or off. The sigh of a rapturous satisfaction, decorously stifled in polite company. The whole place breathes Aspiration, but with a murmuring, eminently reassuring discretion. Like a powerful but slimline tablet that slips just so into your breast pocket without ruining the line.

Nothing, one feels, could ever go wrong here.

Which is why, at 1:14 p.m., when the first faint suggestions appear in the air on the twenty-fifth floor, the staff ignore them. Someone’s been careless about disposing of takeaway, they think to themselves. Someone will call in the cleaning staff[10]. Someone will crack open a window.

Of course, Baxter’s being housed in a crystal rapier thrusting right into the heart of Modern Commerce, an actual window that can actually be opened is a rare commodity[11].

Which might contribute to the fact that by 1:31 p.m., the suggestion in the air is no longer a suggestion. It has become a letter to the editor, and is rapidly barrelling towards Strongly Worded Notice To The Management.

Someone – because, eventually, there is always someone – calls the cleaning staff.

‘It pongs,’ she says. ‘Like prawn curry that’s gone off or something.’

The smell is indeed reminiscent of prawn curry that’s gone off. But, by 2:07, as the twenty-fourth floor begins to lift its head and wrinkle its nose, that description doesn’t quite do it justice.

It’s … robust, the smell. It rubs its back with loving familiarity on the leather seats and plush occasional chairs, it pokes its nose into breakout rooms like a well-loved family dog. And like a dog, it brings its freight of sulphur and phosphorus and lays it hopefully at your feet. It is confiding and eager and always underfoot, impossible to ignore.

Unlike a dog, however, the cleaning staff finds, it is impossible to locate.

By three p.m., nobody’s working above the twentieth floor. Impeccably-suited analysts and agents with one of precisely three modish haircuts are congregating outside, vaping and composing hysterical but vague tweets.

By three-thirty p.m., a low-voiced executive assistant is making a number of rather urgent telephone calls. Inside a nearby conference room, a Vice President is making golf jokes that would be landing rather better if the delegation from Hong Kong weren’t sniffing delicately.

By three-forty-five p.m., a rather large quantity of air freshener has been pressed into action.

At three-fifty p.m., the leader of the Hong Kong delegation is sneezing profusely.

At four p.m., the executive assistant is calling for an inhaler. Her voice is no longer low.

At four-fifteen p.m., the wail of ambulance sirens splits the welkin outside Baxter’s.

At four-thirty p.m., the leader of the delegation from Hong Kong is still a little shaken.

At four-forty-five p.m., the paramedics have taken the shock blanket off the leader of the Hong Kong delegation.

‘You’ve got a bit of a pong in there,’ says the driver to the Vice President. ‘I don’t know if you noticed.’

At five p.m., the meeting has been hastily moved to a Caffe Nero down the road.

By five-thirty p.m., the executive assistant has found a conference room at a Novotel.

By six p.m., even the Vice President has to acknowledge that a rotting carcass stench and near-death from anaphylaxis have lent the meeting a blow from which it is unlikely to recover.

They have a sombre dinner at the Ivy, and sit lugubriously through a series of energetic performance from a dizzying array of plucked and buffed young women dressed in vertiginous heels and little else.

The delegation from Hong Kong leaves the next morning, and is non-committal about the possibility of re-opening discussions about a very promising joint venture in SoHo.

The Vice President’s mood is not improved when the receptionist hands him a note.

‘What the - ? Here,’ he says, ‘does anyone know anything about this?’

He holds up the note and meets a row of blank faces until he hears a choking gasp.

‘Rupert?,’ he says.

Rupert Baxter – for it is the great man himself – reaches out a trembling hand.

‘Can I,’ he says, and clears his throat, ‘can I see the note?’

The Vice President hands him the note. ‘Do you have any idea what was behind this?’

‘What?’ says Baxter, looking at the note with such fixity the Vice President is amazed it doesn’t burst into flames under his gaze. ‘No. No idea.’

The Vice President lingers, but when it seems that no more is forthcoming, he says ‘But we think it’s - ’ he coughs. ‘If I ask Hong Kong over again, there won’t be - ?’

‘Oh,’ says Baxter. ‘Oh Good Lord, yes. They’ll be finished by then.’

‘They - ?’

‘It,’ says Baxter. ‘Did I say they?’

The Vice President recalls a pressing engagement and leaves. Rupert Baxter does not notice his departure.

He’s considering the note, turning it over and over on the polished mahogany of his desk.

The note – on Baxter letterhead – says ‘IT’LL TAKE MORE THAN ELDERFLOWER’.

* * *

That night, Crowley’s back behind the bar, breaking off a sprig of elderflower[12] with a careful hand. A scant thirty metres away, someone who read classics at Merton is being ground into the dust under a pink-faced Aziraphale’s chariot wheels[13].

The next afternoon, however, there’s an agitated call from Aziraphale.

‘It’s Baxter’s,’ he says without preamble when Crowley lets himself in. ‘Look!’

Crowley takes the letter from Aziraphale’s hand.

‘His offer halves by every day you delay?’

Aziraphale nods.

‘Well, that’s all right, isn’t it? We can wait him out.’ Crowley grins. ‘If there’s anything we can do, angel, it’s wait. He’s brought a knife to a gun-fight.’

‘Ordinarily, yes,’ says Aziraphale. ‘But in this case, as it happens … time is _not_ on our side.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Aziraphale sighs. ‘Gabriel,’ he says, in accents of doom. ‘He’s planning to visit.’

‘Eugh,’ says Crowley, ‘but I don’t see - ’

‘And if he comes,’ says Aziraphale, ‘while the shop is – is in the throes of dispossession, I just – they’re still being audited Crowley, and there’s always been such a to- _do_ over my accounts, and I really _can’t_ add to the mountains of paperwork, I’d simply never hear the end of it.’

This, Crowley knows, is literally true. ‘Never’ has a potent and undeniable heft for an angel.

‘Hmmm,’ says Crowley. ‘So we have to wrap this up - ’

‘In the next week, if we can.’

‘Hmmmmm,’ says Crowley.

He googles Rupert Baxter the next day, and soldiers through the paeans to his scrappiness and pluck and indomitable courage in the face of the insuperable obstacles of a stockbroker father and an Eton schooling. He wades through interview after interview with terrified-seeming stooges tittering weakly at his jokes, and spends some time contemplating photos of a man who seems to have adopted growing into his (very long, very white) teeth as his life’s project.

He’s about to call it quits when someone from the BBC asks what happened to Percy Pilbeam.

Baxter stiffens. It’s only for a moment, but Crowley sees it. His lips thin, his shoulders freeze, his eyes snap.

‘What about Pilbeam?’ says Baxter. He’s smiling. Either his teeth have grown or his lips have been pulled back.

‘Baxter’s used to be Baxter and Pilbeam,’ says the journalist, squaring her shoulders.

‘Different visions,’ says Baxter, smiling whitely. ‘We had different visions.’

‘So you’ve said before,’ says the journalist. ‘It’s never been clear what those visions are.’

‘I can talk to you about Baxter’s,’ says Baxter, smiling again. ‘You’ll have to ask Pilbeam what his is.’

‘I will,’ says the journalist, ‘but I wanted to ask you - ’

‘Baxter’s,’ says Baxter, ‘wants to revolutionise living. Nothing less.’

‘Yes, but - ’

‘We want to make the world a better place, one home at a time.’

‘Very nice, but - ’

‘Take our new venture in Kuala Lumpur, for example.’

Crowley switches off the video.

The next day, Percy Pilbeam’s offices receive a call from an Anthony J Crowley, with an offer he (Crowley) says he (Pilbeam) can’t refuse.

The day after that, Rupert Baxter receives a civilly-worded letter[14] from A. Z. Fell. When he finishes it he puts it down very carefully and then asks his assistant to put a call through to Percy Pilbeam.

The assistant reminds him that he has a three o’clock with the chair of the Hong Kong delegation, meets a wide white smile and says ‘Yes, Mr. Baxter.’

‘Thank you, Emerald.’

The assistant – who is not now, nor has ever been, called Emerald – nods.

She manages to get through to Percy Pilbeam's offices, but is met with smooth demurrals from not one, not two, but three executive assistants of escalating seniority and reassuring vocal proximity to Edinburgh.

She swallows as she looks up into Rupert Baxter’s face.

‘Tell him,’ says Baxter, with immense – if toothy – calm, ‘that I’m going to Fell’s now.’

The assistant nods.

‘And,’ says Baxter, ‘call me my car.’

The assistant nods.

When Baxter reaches Fell’s, he is greeted by the smell of Oolong and the sound of Fell himself offering to ‘be Mother[15]’ to the silent but visible and profound embarrassment of his red-headed confederate and a man Baxter knows well.

‘Mr Baxter!,’ says Fell happily. ‘What an unexpected pleasure!’

‘Laying it on a bit thick there, angel,’ says the redhead, rising to his feet. ‘Mr Baxter, in the flesh.’

Baxter looks at the redhead narrowly. ‘Elderflower,’ he says at length.

The ginger sweeps him a leg – and it is a leg, thrust forward in skinny jeans with no pockets, other leg cocked at a precise 116-degree angle, arm arched loftily skywards. He says ‘You can call me Crowley. And Mr Pilbeam you know already.’

Baxter turns to the other man, who has been staring at him. ‘Pilbeam,’ he says.

‘Baxter,’ says Percy Pilbeam.

‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,’ murmurs Crowley, ‘he has to walk into mine.’

‘Mr. Pilbeam,’ says Fell, ‘has made me the most _generous_ offer.’

‘An offer we can’t refuse,’ says Crowley[16].

Baxter looks at Fell, and snaps back to Pilbeam. ‘You’re going to refuse,’ he says, ‘because there is no other offer.’

Pilbeam speaks for the first time. ‘There is,’ he says.

‘There isn’t,’ says Baxter.

‘There is,’ says Pilbeam.

Baxter twitches. ‘You wouldn’t care about this place – you wouldn’t _know_ – if I hadn’t made a move.’

‘Now there,’ says Pilbeam, ‘you are mistaken. I’ve had my eye on a nice little Soho office for quite a while now.’ He pauses and licks his lips before continuing ‘A headquarters for Pilbeam’s new Hong Kong venture.’

Baxter takes a step forward. ‘You wouldn’t.’

Pilbeam grins. ‘I would.’

‘You can’t take both of them!’ says Baxter, and the teacups rattle. ‘You can’t take _everything_.’

‘Everything?,’ says Pilbeam, a spot of red in his cheeks. ‘ _Everything?_ You left me with _nothing_ , Rupert.’

‘I didn’t leave you,’ says Baxter. ‘I. Didn’t. Leave.’

Pilbeam draws himself up and looks away. He says ‘If you want to keep something, you ought to – hold it close.’

‘I did!’

‘Or at least fight for it.’

‘You left,’ says Baxter.

‘You let me,’ says Pilbeam.

‘Percy,’ says Baxter.

Pilbeam recoils. ‘No,’ he says, ‘don’t ‘Percy’ me. You don’t get to ‘Percy’ me.’

‘Percy - ’

‘No!’

‘Percy - ’

‘Make me an offer,’ says Pilbeam, his eyes shut, ‘through my solicitor’s.’ He turns to Fell. ‘Thank you for having me,’ he says with aggressive civility.

‘Your solicitor?,’ says Baxter. ‘Your _solicitor_?’

Pilbeam reaches into the pocket of his coat and hands out a little rectangle of reassuring heft and discreet dove-grey. ‘Their card.’

Baxter snatches it from Pilbeam’s hand. ‘My offer?’ he says. ‘I _offer_ to drown you in injunctions, and stay orders, and search requests. I’ll crawl over every single communication you send with a fine-tooth comb. I’ll query the spelling of every word, the placement of every comma. I’ll drag you in front of every tribunal I can think of. I’ll invent them if I can’t find any. Every t you think you’ve crossed, every i you think you’ve dotted - ’

‘Every time I think I’m out,’ says Crowley, ‘he pulls me back in.’

‘What?’ says Pilbeam.

Crowley says ‘He’ll see you in court, Mr Pilbeam.’ He pauses and says reflectively ‘He’ll see you any way he can.’

Baxter starts. ‘That’s not - ’

‘I do understand,’ says Crowley. ‘You’re enemies, aren’t you? Hereditary enemies. Wily adversaries. You keep each other on your toes. Court orders and pitch meetings and boardrooms, it’s the only way you see each other. It’s better than pints down the pub, shoulders brushing, knees bumping. Better than celebrating a new win or shaking off a bad day.’

‘We didn’t - ’

‘Didn’t you,’ says Crowley. It’s not a question. ‘Oh, that’s fine then. It’s definitely better, now. Definitely.’

Pilbeam fidgets. Crowley continues ‘It’s tiresome, isn’t it? Busy men like yourselves, empires to run, temptations to construct, head office breathing down your necks - ’

‘…Temptations?’

‘Head office?’

Crowley doesn’t appear to have heard them. ‘So many other things you could be doing. Big world out there, drinks to be had, gigs to go to, naps to be napped, gobshites to stuff into glass-and-concrete phalluses …’

Baxter scowls. He doesn’t look at Pilbeam, but he knows – with unwavering certainty – that Pilbeam doesn’t look best-pleased either.

‘So much easier,’ says Crowley. ‘So much simpler. You wish you could quit him, or you _wish_ you wish you could quit him. But somehow …’ He breathes out. ‘Somehow…’

He trails off. Baxter sneaks a look at Pilbeam.

Who is looking right back at him.

There follows a rather protracted, rather crowded silence.

Crowley coughs.

‘Anyway…’ he says.

‘I think,’ says Fell, briskly, ‘that these nice gentlemen deserve a spot of lunch.’

Baxter blinks at Fell. ‘I don’t - ’

‘You do,’ says Fell, ‘I think you’ll find you do.’

‘I,’ says Baxter, and gives up. There is in Fell’s wide smile and confidential chirrup an emphasis better suited to the carving of commandments deep into the most unyielding stone. ‘I’ll have Emerald book us a - ’

‘No need,’ says Fell, waving them on. ‘Table for two, at Barribault’s. Under the name of Ezra Fell.’

Baxter hesitates. Barribault’s – Barribault’s of the fleet-footed wraithlike waiting staff, vaulted-ceilinged Barribault’s, Barribault’s of the ecclesiastical hush, the excellence of whose boeuf bourguignon is eclipsed only by the glory of its winelist – is hard to say no to. But –

There’s a hand on his arm.

He looks into Percy Pilbeam's eyes.

‘Make me,’ says Percy, ‘an offer.’

Baxter swallows.

* * *

Crowley and Aziraphale watch them leave. Crowley says ‘D’you think it’ll work?’

‘Perhaps it won’t,’ says Aziraphale. ‘They’re adversaries. Perhaps they’ll remember the reason they’re fighting.’

‘Must have been a good reason,’ says Crowley, watching him.

‘Must have been,’ says Aziraphale. ‘Surely.’

‘Stands to reason.’

‘An incontrovertible reason.’

‘And if they find out …’

‘Then we’re fucked,’ says Aziraphale, and Crowley absolutely does _not_ shiver at the voluptuous crispness of the sound in Aziraphale’s mouth. ‘Or at least,’ continues Aziraphale, ‘ _I_ am.’

‘ _We_ are,’ says Crowley, bristling. And then his eyes meet Aziraphale’s dewy searchlight beam and he swallows.

‘My dear,’ says Aziraphale, his eyes brimming. Crowley fumbles for his Oolong and drinks it.

He still feels rather thirsty.

‘Anyway,’ he says, making a point of slurping, ‘ _anyway_ , if they decide to team back up - ’

‘You’ll think of something,’ says Aziraphale.

It’s unseemly to blush. If Crowley were on top of his game, he’d know better than to let his vessel blush, let alone turn the colour of a sunset over a ketchup factory. Alas and alack, Crowley is _not_ on top of his game.

‘That Hong Kong venture they were talking about, for instance?’ says Aziraphale, blowing delicately on his tea. ‘Frightfully long way away, Hong Kong.’

Crowley nods, not really listening. The tips of Aziraphale’s lashes are gilded in the dying light.

‘In any case,’ says Aziraphale, ‘perhaps they won’t remember why they were enemies.’

‘Maybe they will,’ offers Crowley, ‘and they’ll realise their reasons weren’t good ones.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a _cheering_ thought?,’ says Aziraphale.

Crowley nods.

'After all,' says Aziraphale, lifting his head to look into Crowley's eyes, 'it's likely their reasons _weren't_ good ones.'

Crowley swallows. 'It - maybe.'

'Almost certainly,' says Aziraphale. 'Best ignored altogether, I find.'

'Oh,' says Crowley.

'Indeed,' says Aziraphale, and sips his tea.

Crowley looks at Aziraphale, his feet, back at Aziraphale, and then remembers something. ‘Aziraphale,’ he says, ‘if you’re doing miracles again, then isn’t all this moot?’

Aziraphale looks at him, eyebrows lifted delicately. ‘Miracles?’

‘Barribault’s,’ says Crowley. ‘You had a reservation. Unless – did you not have a table?’ With foreboding ‘Angel, you can’t have them come back shown up and empty-handed, that’ll just - ’

‘No, no,’ says Aziraphale, ‘I had a reservation.’

‘A – but how - ’

‘People do acquire them, you know,’ says Aziraphale, ‘through the simple expedient of picking up a telephone.’

‘It’s Barribault’s,’ says Crowley, ‘you’d have had to ‘pick up a telephone[17]’ months in advance.’

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale.

‘I - ’ says Crowley, and shuts his mouth. He opens it again to say ‘How did you - ’

‘I’ve had,’ says Aziraphale, and he puts down his cup. He’s rather pink. ‘I’ve had a standing booking at Barribault’s for – ah – for some time now.'

Crowley looks at Aziraphale.

‘We went there last year, if you remember,’ says Aziraphale.

Crowley keeps looking at him.

‘The _Crepe Suzette_ was exquisite, if you recall.’

Crowley keeps looking at him.

‘I know you thought it was,’ says Aziraphale archly, ‘because you ate a bite of yours. A whole bite!’

Crowley keeps looking at him. He says slowly ‘I remember.’

Aziraphale beams. ‘And so I thought – because you don’t, not usually, you don’t _partake_ – that we might, perhaps, one day…’

Crowley keeps looking at him.

‘Their _gateau Opera_ , for example…’

‘Angel,’ says Crowley, ‘you have a standing reservation at Barribault’s on the off-chance that I might one day fancy _crepes Suzette_?’

Aziraphale’s hands flutter. He says ‘I’ve heard wonderful things about their _tarte conversation_ \- ’

‘Angel.’

Aziraphale’s gaze lowers.

Crowley says ‘And now you’ve given away our reservation so those two thrusting wankers can make eyes at each other over the wine.’

Aziraphale giggles. He says ‘You brought them together, Crowley.’

‘That,’ says Crowley, ‘was a ruse.’

‘You’re a romantic.’

Crowley’s head snaps up.

‘A softie.’

Aziraphale is looking at him, his chin up a little. His eyes are perfectly steady.

He could take offence, thinks Crowley. He could pick up Aziraphale by his lapels and slam him against a bookshelf – that one groaning with rich leather-bound volumes of _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. The idea is … not without appeal.

Aziraphale’s eyes are glistening in the dark.

Crowley steps forward. Aziraphale wets his lips.

Crowley reaches behind Aziraphale for a bottle of burgundy.

He takes Aziraphale’s cup from his hand and tips in a generous amount of wine, and then does the same for himself.

After all, thinks Crowley, feeling Aziraphale watch him, why should Baxter and Pilbeam have all the fun?

He lifts his cup.

‘Here’s looking at you, kid,’ he says.

* * *

[1] Inadvertently, it need hardly be said.

[2] A significant proportion of these visitors will work up the nerve to press a leetle further into Soho to attend to the itch that a visit to A. Z. Fell just barely scratcheda.

a. Whereupon stern individuals with ‘Mistress’ or ‘Daddy’ somewhere in their titles will usher them into the more rarefied aspects of being denied a thing you really, really wantb.

b. The experience does require rather greater financial outlay, but is tremendously more satisfyingc.

c. Or rather _not_ satisfying, depending on the precise needs of the individual.

[3] Crowley would tell you, of course – exhaustively and at length – that calling every Aziraphale rebuff the same is like calling all skies the same shade of blue. There are nuances, he will tell you, pulling up a chair. For instance, was Aziraphale’s chin tilted? Was he speaking in sorrow more than in anger? Did he twinkle at the end? Did he agree to a meal, and if so, was it lunch, tea or dinnera?

a. Aziraphale has, with pomp, circumstance and circumspection, intimated that he might, in the fullness of some decades, be open to entertaining the possibility of brunch. This momentous announcement was followed by a brooding silence on the subject every time Crowley brought it up, however circuitously, so Crowley has decided to let the matter restb.

b. Also, it gives him time for a nap. Crowley’s never particularly seen the _point_ of brunch.

[4] Acting and academia, for example.

[5] It is in the nature of things that, in the Byzantine and lumbering bureaucracy of Upstairs and Downstairs, the only resource both departments call their own is accounting and audits. It is also in the nature of things that, with no motivation except the satisfaction of a job well done and/or glittering-eyed spite, they’re the only entities who reliably get anything done.

[6] A tolerable Rioja that Aziraphale cannot even delicately whisper into the full bloom of a Tinta de Toro. This most minor of miracles, and his hands are tied. The _indignity_.

[7] Aziraphale has, without great success, extolled the many splendours of Test Match cricket to Crowley. The charm of watching thirteen people do nothing very much and take five days to do it (soundtracked by a gnomic susurrus and the occasional ‘klonk’) passes Crowley harmlessly by. Limited overs matches, however, are another proposition entirely. Not that he finds the matches themselves any more tolerable. But the Duckworth-Lewis method was the first time he’s experienced anything like professional envy. He took credit for it and took Aziraphale to Fat Duck to celebrate the resulting commendation.

[8] Aziraphale has taken the Tube. He rode the Bakerloo line with great assiduity and delight in the early twentieth century, only getting down at Waterloo and neither noticing nor caring that, in strictly narrow and technical terms, this stop was not in any way actually on the way from his Soho apartments to his Soho bookshop. He is an unfailingly civil and amiable passenger, and has been widely blacklisted by every Underground company for his attempts to perform unsolicited magic tricks to lift the spirits of his carriage at peak hour.

[9] The young man beams anyway. Crowley’s not sure why he is fated to be surrounded by people with an inner and near-impenetrable hostility force field. Sometimes he suspects it’s the only notice She’s ever taken of him, to be exclusively around people who will blunt and frustrate the most determined attempts at discourtesy.

[10] ‘Someone’ is a great and enduring boon to Crowley. Someone will take care of it. Someone will deal with it. Someone will see it, say it, sort it. The Someone whose problem it is. The Someone above whose paygrade this is not.

[11] And indeed, once it was found, someone in the architect’s office sat up bolt upright screaming inarticulately, and couldn’t say why.

[12] Crowley could have taken the risk of a new vendor to supply his elderflower, but he thought he’d cut out the middleman. He brought home an elderflower tree and explained to it in careful, methodical, comprehensive terms the fate awaiting barren foliage in his house. He made a pointed demonstration, sacrificing a laggardly but promising yucca to the cause.

[13] Metaphoricallya.

a More or less.

[14] And it is a letter. Aziraphale is not opposed to electronic mail in principle, and even owns a computer that looks like a rejected TARDIS design. He operates it expertly and receives dense guidance from the whilom Sister Loquacious on the precise technical specifications of replacement parts and plug-ins to keep ita clankingly, whirringly, but reliably operational. However, he is of the unshakeable opinion that certain matters are best confined to the scratch of a fountain pen on weighty snowy-white paper.

a And it is an ‘it’. Neither Aziraphale nor Crowley is immune to the human tendency to a) anthropomorphise and b) gender inanimate objects, but Aziraphale is indifferent to gender and Crowley’s happy to take the angel’s share, seeing as he isn’t using any.

[15] This means, for the uninitiated, that Fell is offering to pour out the tea. Fell is not offering his services in any larger capacity.

[16] Crowley is aware he’s repeating himself, but times are tough and everyone’s all about recycling these days.

[17] Here, to his eternal shame, Crowley uses finger quotes.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me about these two darling idiots on tumblr, if you like! Or if you think I wrongly omitted a movie, or if you would like me to name my seconds for a duel for the misuse of The Efficient Baxter. I like to think that somewhere in this unofficial entry to the extended Wodehouseverse, Rupert Baxter and Percy Pilbeam found happiness.
> 
> My handle is [itsevidentvery](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/)
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/189832528950/good-omens-goodfellas-anactoriatalksback-good) if you are so inclined.


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